The United States releases the Confederate commissioners Mason and Slidell into British custody

01/01/1862

On November 30, 1861, Lord Russell, British Foreign Secretary, authorized Lord Lyons, the British ambassador to Washington, to demand the release of the Confederate commissioners taken by force from the British mailship Trent off Cuba three weeks before. For a month following the seizure Britain and the United States seemed to be approaching war but cooler heads prevailed. The Confederate diplomats were "cheerfully liberated" from Fort Warren in Boston to the British warship Rinaldo, ending a dangerous international incident. (By John Osborne)

Source Citation:

Benson J. Lossing, The Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War in the United States of America (Hartford, CT: T. Belnap, 1874), 164.